Financial Services Bill (Seventh sitting)

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 26th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

Separately, I note that there is already clear legislation that covers manipulation or attempted manipulation of a benchmark and provides sanctions for such activities. Under the Financial Services Act 2012, it is a criminal offence to make misleading statements in relation to benchmarks. In fact, in the Bill, as the right hon. Gentleman also rightly mentioned, there are measures that increase the maximum sentence for such a crime to 10 years.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is wonderful to serve under your chairmanship, as ever, Mr Davies. The Minister is explaining that there is a process for enforcement. We all know that this issue is very specialist. If he thinks the current regulations and sanctions are appropriate, could he set out how they are being enacted and monitored? Frankly, it requires someone with a specialist understanding of how these rates can be manipulated to enact them in the way he outlines. If he does not want to add the amendment, could he explain how these issues can be investigated, and what resources there are to do that?

[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point. These matters are administered by the FCA. I have set out the framework under which it operates. Its resourcing is a matter for it, and I speak on a six-weekly basis to the chief executive about that. The sanctions available to the FCA vary considerably according the nature of the breaches. Some will be small, modest technical breaches.

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister has set out the criminal sanction. I am interested in whether there is support and resourcing expertise in relation to the criminal element, as opposed to the regulatory element.

[John Glen]

At this point I cannot give her chapter and verse on the exact attribution of resources to this measure, but I can look into that and come back to her.